1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for controlling the operation of a moving average filter, which is capable of optimizing the ability to cope with a surge noise through reasonable control of a tracking speed with respect to a change in an input value.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information, which is continuously changed with time, such as sound, light, temperature, pressure, position and the like, can be converted into an analog electrical signal (voltage or current) by means of a transducer or a sensor. An electronic circuit configured to deliver the information by amplifying, detecting and converting a voltage, current, frequency or the like of the analog electrical signal obtained thus is referred to as an analog circuit.
Such an analog circuit may contain a noise. As a randomly-varying external signal, the noise is generated by random heat vibration of particles such as atoms. The noise is mainly generated due to use of poorly designed parts, repeated radiation of a signal for remote transmission, introduction of an external electric signal, etc. Such a noise may decrease a level of an original signal by decreasing a irregular change in the signal.
If a random external noise is added to an analog signal, it is difficult to distinguish from the original signal. This problem may be solved by a separate circuit or algorithm adapted to cope with such a difficulty.
A noise filter is often used to block a noise. As a kind of the noise filter, a moving average filter has a trade-off relationship between a response speed and a noise blocking performance. That is, a higher response speed of the moving average filter provides a lower noise blocking performance thereof. Therefore, in order to increase the noise blocking performance, it is necessary to decrease the response speed.
Accordingly, the present invention suggests a novel algorithm which is capable of efficiently controlling a response speed and a noise blocking performance of a moving average filter.